by Erin Davis
Rob and I—and eventually Lauren—knew that it was part of the deal we had made: the radio station would advertise the morning show on television, in print and on billboards, and I, in turn, would be a full-time ambassador for the most-listened-to radio station in Canada. It wasn’t a clause in a contract or something we had all agreed to in writing; it was just the way it was. And I couldn’t have been more proud than to represent a station that was so much a part of Toronto’s very fabric for nearly half of CHFI’s sixty-some years.
Okay, I suppose, in a way, I was a little like Joan Crawford: fastidiously answering “fan” (I don’t like that word and prefer listener) mail, which got easier through the years, with the advent of email. Thankfully, I was able to reach out and respond to every one of the listeners who got me where I was. I will state for the record, however, that although, like Joan, I leaned in to the return of shoulder pads (at five foot ten inches tall, I probably had the silhouette of a corkscrew for much of the decade), I have absolutely no strong opinions on clothes hangers. With a teenager under our roof, we were just delighted when she used them.
Lauren knew that when she heard those words—“be on your best”—she had to do just that: behave herself. No tantrums or outbursts, not that she was prone to them anyway. Was it unfair of us to ask this of a child? While I’m sure there are as many opinions as there are parents, I honestly do not know. I am confident in what worked for us as a family. We reminded her often that, as in all areas of life, nothing was really free; there was a price to pay for the great seats at the musical theatre or the unusual opportunities that this public life afforded us. She knew very early on that there was always a cost, and that we’d have to pay it together.
My reason was not a need to appear perfect, or because I entertained some lofty view of myself that I felt my child should help propagate. I just knew human nature. Many was the time I had sat and heard a manicurist tell me how nasty so-and-so from the TV was (because her cousin had seen her in a lineup at the grocery store), or how someone from another radio station was a lousy tipper or a womanizer or a big drinker or . . . any number of stories about people that may or may not have been true. When it comes to gossip, that rarely matters. As someone whose image was recognizable, I believed (rightly or wrongly) that I was always a face for the radio station to which I was so loyal. Besides that, I was damned if I would let my family be the topic of somebody’s dinner table conversation. I wasn’t going to give anyone anything to dine on—not if we could prevent it with a simple agreement to conduct ourselves in a way that would make the radio station proud. We knew we were asking a lot of Lauren, but she knew that she was getting a lot. She was not an entitled child, nor did she expect anything. She was gracious, sensitive and grateful, writing thank-you cards and emails to strangers and family alike without being prompted. And she was almost always “on her best.”
I had always promised her that, since she had grown up with me for a mother and with this life we all lived out loud, we’d make sure there was always money for therapy. We always laughed together when I said it, but it was true. She was never the born “people pleaser” that I was, always striving for approval and affection; she did things her own way. And yet, there she was as an adult, having chosen to work in a media role in which you literally succeed or fail based on whether people like you. I wish that time and fate had given us the chance to figure that one out together—just who she really was, this very special child of ours, to whom I wrote these words before her second birthday. The note is written on hotel stationery, so I was clearly away again and missing her, feeling guilty about the many miles between us.
My Beautiful Lauren:
Sometimes I wonder how God gave us someone so sweet
Such a droplet of perfection in an otherwise dry and flawed existence.
Through all our worries and doubts your face shines
An angel permeating the clouds.
And though I know I can’t spend the hours with you
I want to—I should—you love me
With the unconditional innocence and trust
That are my gift from you for giving birth.
I would do it a hundred times more
To pay you for the love you’ve showered upon me.
May I always be deserving—
And you forgiving.
Love, Mommy
CHAPTER 2
We Are (REaL) Family
Erin, Lauren and Rob, February 2013
Marta Kubiak, K&M Studio Photography
DESPITE A LOVE OF TRAVEL, I HAVE HAD NIGHTMARES about plane crashes ever since I was a child: both witnessing them and being in them. To this day, I watch flights coming in and out of our nearby airport (which, as twisted fate would have it, I can see from our living room window) and marvel at the fact that they stay in the sky or land where they should. Planes just scare me.
It stems from a horrific event that marred a favourite family outing, an air show, in Trenton, Ontario, where my dad was stationed. Eventually promoted to lieutenant-colonel, Dad would go on to become a squadron leader there (436 Hercules), and one of his favourite things was to take his family every year to the air show. For a town of fewer than twenty thousand in 1972, the show was impressive, at least to Dad, Mom and their four girls. I believe Dad was proud of the way the people on the base saluted him; he wanted us to see that he had earned their respect, that he was more than just our dad who came home to get laundry done, help Mom with a little discipline where needed, drink up with the boys on Friday nights and then fly away again.
The show was like so many others to which we’d gone or been dragged over the years: static displays of massive aircraft, a glider pilot who wafted through the skies to the tune of “Born Free” while the poem “High Flight” was recited over the scratchy PA system, plus stands where you could get a hot dog or popcorn if you could talk your parents into springing for it. I don’t know when, during this particular show, it dawned on this nine-year-old that there was trouble above us, but I do remember I was watching through binoculars when two small Snowbird jets (part of Canada’s military aerobatics team) clipped wings in what seemed to devolve into slow motion.
I’m guessing my father had seen what was coming, because he hurriedly made us turn our backs. We all obeyed and did not see lead solo Captain Waterer’s small red, white and silver Tutor jet hit the ground in a fiery explosion. But those moments and their aftermath have stayed with me.
Was it because, as a child, a crash is the last thing you expect to witness at an air show? Was it because, until that very moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that, as a pilot, my own father was so very vulnerable to forces of gravity and failures of humans and machines? Perhaps it was because we did not talk about it—not one word—at the sombre dinner table that night. When I tearfully told my mother that I wasn’t hungry, she told me not to be ridiculous and to eat my dinner. It became clear to me that we weren’t going to be discussing the plane crash we’d just witnessed—not then, not ever.
I know now that my mother was probably more shaken than we could have comprehended at that time. How could she not have been? As a pilot’s wife, this was a fear she lived with every single day. She knew his life was not all shoe shines and salutes; my mom could tell how rough a flight he’d had both during his time in the Armed Forces and, later, as a commercial jetliner pilot by the perspiration stains on his shirts. She saw marriages around her breaking up and knew of other officers’ wives within her circle who had become widows. But she put those fears away. She buried them as best she could and sometimes she even succeeded. For a time I did too.
In my late teens and early twenties, I embraced the risks and adventures that accompanied flying by signing up for every media opportunity to be a passenger in a small stunt plane that came my way, including a chance to ride in a Snowbird as a promotion for the Canadian International Air Show. I was so proud to be among those who hadn’t lost their proverbial lunches during a flight, especially once I learn
ed that women had a much better record in that regard than their male counterparts. But sadly, as if to remind me of my initial fears—and suggest that I should not put them away yet—just a few days later, a Snowbird would crash at the Labour Day air show, claiming the life of its young pilot. I remembered the number on its wing; it was the plane ahead of mine as we’d flown over an open SkyDome (now Rogers Centre) and a rapt Blue Jays crowd.
When I became a mother, my fear of flying (and landing) returned tenfold. Suddenly, it struck home that there was someone relying on her daddy and me to return safely. We made sure our wills were filled out. We called our loved ones from the airport. With parenthood, flying had taken on so many more worries and risks.
As Lauren grew, I managed to put those fears aside and embrace the adventure ahead. And there were so many adventures! How could I ever have imagined that the most terrifying thing to happen on one of these long-distance outings would occur not on an airplane but in my “happy place”—near a microphone, getting ready to wake up friendly, sleepy listeners?
Rob and I would tackle our radio station trips (and we must have been on a dozen of them) like a project in those first long hours of travel: I asked our promotions team to take a picture of each winner holding a sign bearing their name when they came to register prior to the week of travel. Using those pictures like the flash cards I’d once employed while prepping for final exams, Rob would quiz me on the names of the winners and their spouses. It was almost foolproof, and something that never failed to impress each listener. They would step off that big bus at the resort and I would hug them and say, “Lisa!” or “Derek!” Surprised, they would quickly look down to see if their nametags were showing (occasionally they were, but even a furtive glance would have given me away); in that instant, they knew I cared enough to learn who they were in advance. And I did care. I loved these listeners. Sure, the week in a foreign land outside of the comfort zone of our studio was a logistical and stressful challenge, but we were so grateful for the chance to bond with some of the people with whom we had shared countless mornings over the years. Besides, it seemed as though they already knew not only me and my radio partner and producer, but also my (jokingly) beleaguered husband, Rob. After all, they’d heard all about him for years. And, of course, they’d known Lauren since before she’d been born; we’d announced my pregnancy on the radio as my partner and I did a week of live shows from a frigid downtown department store window in November 1990. Lauren arrived four months later and was immediately nicknamed “Squidget” by my radio partner at the time, the one who described my pregnancy in terms of cattle: “Erin’s going to freshen in the spring.” Well, I did. And soon, Lauren’s coos and cries would be heard on the air, as I did the show with her in my arms.
* * *
LAUREN’S being an only child was almost as much her decision as it was nature’s. Our determined little Aries made it clear as soon as she could express herself that she didn’t want any siblings; I had visions of her mowing me down, like Damien taking down Katherine with his tricycle in The Omen. Eventually, it became clear to us that Lauren’s desire would become our reality. Although we kept shuffling the deck, another child just wasn’t in the cards. Without any sense of loss or missing out, we were contented and grateful to be just three: Rob, Erin and Lauren—or REaL Family, the name our freelance company would come to share.
Despite a work schedule that was taxing and a job that blurred the lines between who I was and what I did, we were afforded wonderful chunks of time for travel. Sometimes it was local: we’d often pluck Lauren from school at noon on Friday to make the more than two-hour drive to our cottage before the rest of the city attempted the same exodus. And we tried to use those car rides to broaden her education: they were spent in a way we deemed extremely productive—introducing our daughter to Beatles music one CD at a time (such a gloriously captive audience we had), and singing silly songs together in three-part harmony:
We’re going to the cottage
We’re going to the cottage
And when we get to the cottage
Then we’ll be at the caw-aw-tage!
Sometimes we couldn’t get out of the city early and would arrive at our chilly A-frame on a tiny northern lake after darkness had fallen. On those occasions, while Rob built a fire, I’d turn on the oven and heat a baking sheet to put between Lauren’s sheets to warm her bunk bed, removing the sheet before she climbed in, of course. Truly, we were roughing it, Little House on the Prairie–style!
Like many who live in the crowded, cranky cacophony of an urban setting, we found ourselves counting down to the end of each week, when we could pack up and escape to a slower, quieter surrounding—one where we were more likely to be awakened by the lonely echoes of a loon’s call than the incessant, panicked whines of city sirens. Perhaps it’s because the aperture on our mind’s eye was closing so gently, but our most vivid family memories were made in our Ontario cottage: Christmas mornings greeted by freshly fallen snow as we scurried to build a warm fire behind those stockings; New Year’s celebrations spent laughing in a steaming outdoor hot tub; Easter morning hunts for eggs hidden among neatly stacked piles of firewood; summer days whiled away in slow boats to nowhere, and evenings spent singing while fending off mosquitoes around a firepit under the stars.
Twice, as money allowed, we moved our country life a little closer to the city. The proximity let us skip the long, congested drive back on a Sunday night, when the stiffness in one’s neck increased in direct correlation to how close we drew to city limits. Instead, we were able to pack up and depart in the wee hours of the morning, before my radio show. On those coffee-fuelled drives, Lauren, clad in her pyjamas, would climb into the back seat, where a pillow, blanket and warm dog or two awaited. There, with Lauren safely buckled in, they would all sleep for the eighty-minute drive while I tapped on my dimmed computer and Rob navigated dark country highways. We used to joke that at 3 a.m. the only things to worry about on the roads were drunks and skunks. Our Monday morning commutes were, mostly, without incident, and we thank dollar-store adhesive deer whistles for preventing any more animal carnage than one raccoon and a few hapless mice. We can’t say for sure that these tiny torpedo-shaped whistles that adhered to our front bumper or side-view mirrors were effective—they might also have fended off elephants, as we never hit one of those, either—but we wouldn’t have taken a chance on our dark commutes without them and the high-pitched sound they emitted as the car moved. (And while the jury still appears to be out on the efficacy of these little whistles in alerting deer to a vehicle’s proximity, you’ll find many motorcyclists who rely on them for that added possible safety factor.)
Our cottages over the years were where we could be together, just the three of us: no pull of the internet (until much later) or my job, no sharing Lauren with her friends, at least not until their parents considered them old enough to join us. At the cottage, we could always be our true selves: singing, dancing, laughing, watching movies, sleeping in, baking—all without being under the curious eyes of strangers. Yes, passing boat tours would occasionally point out our home to the paying passengers, but that’s why I rarely went a day without putting on at least a little makeup. And I always wore a cover-up with my bathing suit.
In a grade school project at age twelve, Lauren described her time at the cottage:
On the weekend, the cottage is my favourite place to be. There’s a load to do, whether it’s kayaking on the canal or relaxing in the hot tub. I admit it: we’re not really roughing it. But you can do yoga on the front lawn, go fishing, canoeing, cross-country skiing, swimming, water skiing, tubing and a lot more. There’s something to do for every season or time of the year.
I hope to keep this cottage until I move away; it’s like a vacation spot for me, I love it up there. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else, not for a huge amount of money. My heart belongs in the North.
Although her husband told us, after Lauren’s death, that she regretted our choosing c
ottage time for our family over pursuing the invitation extended to her to play rep softball—something for which she had an obvious talent—I was heartened to find that assignment in a neatly packaged school project binder. It seems that, at least at the time, she had forgiven us and had as soft a spot in her heart for our time cocooned together, away from the demands and noise of the city and the life we’d built there, as we did.
Besides our cottage getaways, long-distance travel always played a significant role in the life of our tight little trio. Perhaps that stems from my childhood, when the smell of jet fuel meant there was an adventure in the near future: a trip west to see my grandparents, or even a move to Great Britain. We moved six times before I was a teen, and I changed schools three times in fifth grade alone! It gave me something to blame for my shortcomings in math—and for that, I’m grateful. Growing up in such a nomadic way can make you shy or extroverted or both, in my opinion: either you’re forced into a place of putting yourself out there trying to make friends among a classroom or a school full of strangers, or you retreat into a corner and hope no one notices the “new kid” and makes fun of her. I ended up being a combination of the two: someone who’s full on when the curtain opens, but with a distinct hermit-like streak the rest of the time. It’s why cottage life suited us so well.
Before we had Lauren out of diapers, we had her in an airplane seat. As a trial, we took part in a brief charity flight from Toronto to Niagara Falls and back that would let her become accustomed to the noise, movement and pressure changes that accompany air travel. She became a seasoned flyer quickly and, thanks to her interest in colouring and puzzles, was easily amused during longer flights. From journeying to Walt Disney World in Florida to joining us on far-flung listener trips with our radio station, Lauren was always ready to pack her blankie and her rolling suitcase and head for the skies.